INDUSTRY, COMMERCE AND LABOR 6l by acquiring forest areas through a system of "dummies", names of nonexistent people or of persons who for a few dollars signed fraudulent homestead applications. A happy outcome was the setting aside later of thousands of acres of forest, formerly public domain and open to homesteading, to form national reserves within the state.
In eastern Oregon the lumber industry was slower in starting but once begun it gathered great speed. There the timber is mainly pine. Some of the largest sawmills in the world are now located at Burns, Bend, and Klamath Falls. Others are near Baker and La Grande.
Waste has marked the lumber industry throughout its history, but today pulp and paper manufacturing, which takes care of much lumber refuse, seems to be developing into a major aspect of the lumber industry. Furniture making, utilizing Oregon oak, alder, maple and walnut, is growing in importance. Several hundred persons in the Coos Bay area are employed in making novelties from myrtlewood. In Marshfield and Coquille the manufacture of battery separators from the acidproof Port Orford cedar is a leading industry. This unique wood is also used in airplane construction. In general, the utilization of forest products is greater in the pine than in the fir regions. One reason is that pine is easier to "work" than fir. Much low-grade pine goes into box "shocks", the pieces from which boxes are made. One pine mill furnishes all the curtain rollers used by a large manufacturer of automobiles. Small pieces of pine are made into toys. One mill specializes in ironing boards.
Until 1930 the tendency was towards larger and larger sawmills. Some of the pine mills in Bend and Klamath Falls have a rated eighthour capacity of 300,000 feet of lumber. A fir mill at Marshfield has a capacity of 650,000 feet in the same space of time. Of late years, however, because of the depression and because of the increased overhead costs in large mills when on curtailed production, and because of the loss of the European market for heavy timbers, few large mills have been built. Instead, many cutting only from 10,000 to 50,000 feet a shift have gone into operation, using logs hauled on trucks which have supplanted logging railroads.
The income from forest products in Oregon is about 177 million dollars annually. Some 40,000 persons are employed who receive in wages and salaries approximately 56 million dollars.
Fishing is still an important industry in Oregon, particularly so on the Columbia River at Astoria, at Warrenton, and at The Dalles; and on the Pacific Coast at Tillamook, Newport, Reedsport, and the
